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Within this paper, the relationship between citizens' emotional reactions to political reporting and their judgment of trust in politicians is investigated. Drawing on appraisal theories of emotion, this paper seeks to answer the question whether affect predicts trust judgments and which emotion plays what role. Findings of two media effects studies, one in the context of the 2013 German televised debate and in the context of the 2014 EU elections, supported the assumption that (1) emotions play a role over and above cognitive evaluations of politicians and (2) effects of affective states differ depending on the appraisal of the emotion. Emotions that can be characterized by other-control appraisals (anger) and no-control appraisals (happiness) do affect trust in politicians, while emotions with situational control appraisal (fear, sadness) or self-control appraisal (pride) do not have an effect. The studies confirm that emotions play a crucial role for subsequent trust judgment over and above evaluations of politicians and also support the idea that valence-based approaches are too simplistic to explain the relationship of emotions and trust judgments.

Mobile communication differs from other forms of mediated communication in terms of connectedness, dynamics, omnipresence, and interactivity. Consequently, it can be difficult for scholars to investigate mobile communication using traditional research methods. The main goal of this article is to show how the mobile experience sampling method (MESM), in combination with data donations, can be useful for addressing the challenges of mobile communication research. We explicate the design using an experience-sampling study that was conducted on mobile campaigning during the Dutch 2021 national election. Using this case, we discuss how MESM can be extended and combined with other data sources, such as tracking data, GPS, and sensory data, to address the challenges of mobile communication effects research and facilitate future studies.

Despite the popularity of the concept of hard and soft news, researchers regularly criticize the vague definitions and inconsistent conceptualizations. Following claims for standardization of concept in journalism research, this article aims to cross-validate the most recent understanding of the concept. We conducted a factorial survey with newspaper journalists to probe the question as to which of the theoretically assumed dimensions of the concept are referred to by journalists to distinguish hard from soft news. We find the dimensions "topic," "relevance," "framing," and "opinion" to exert influence on journalists' understanding of the concept.

Abstract
This paper advances the research on personalization of political communication by investigating whether this process of focusing on politicians instead of political issues plays a role on Twitter. Results of a content analysis of 5,530 tweets posted in the run-up to the German federal election provide evidence that Twitter communication refers more often to politicians than to issues. However, tweets containing personal characteristics about political leaders play only a marginal role. When distinguishing among different groups of actors on Twitter (journalists, politicians, citizens), we find that citizens focus more on candidates than do journalists or politicians. Investigating the impact of a televised debate on Twitter communication, we observe that this person-centered event puts the focus on individual politicians instead of issues.

This article attempts to (a) investigate the relationship between distinct emotional reactions toward political information and attention toward political news and (b) analyze whether this relationship is dynamic. We use an experience sampling design to assess recipients' immediate emotional reactions and attention toward news. Participants reported their emotional reactions (anger, fear, happiness, contentment) and attentional focus directly after following a news item for eight days in a row up to five times a day via smartphone. Results indicate that anger is positively and fear negatively correlated with attention toward political news. For positive emotional reactions, happiness is not correlated with attention to news, while contentment is negatively correlated with attention and also shows a negative lagged effect on attention at a later point in time. The study shows promising ways to assess and analyze dynamic processes in everyday media consumption.